I'm a technology, privacy, and information security reporter and most recently the author of the book This Machine Kills Secrets, a chronicle of the history and future of information leaks, from the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks and beyond.
I've covered the hacker beat for Forbes since 2007, with frequent detours into digital miscellania like switches, servers, supercomputers, search, e-books, online censorship, robots, and China. My favorite stories are the ones where non-fiction resembles science fiction. My favorite sources usually have the word "research" in their titles.
Since I joined Forbes, this job has taken me from an autonomous car race in the California desert all the way to Beijing, where I wrote the first English-language cover story on the Chinese search billionaire Robin Li for Forbes Asia. Black hats, white hats, cyborgs, cyberspies, idiot savants and even CEOs are welcome to email me at agreenberg (at) forbes.com. My PGP public key can be found here.

Another search engine called Skipity, created last June and registered to one Andrew Corley, offers a refreshingly honest example of the privacy policy most companies’ execs would like to implement, but don’t dare to: An absurdly funny, downright contemptuous attack on users’ supposed right to shield their lives from Big Brother that appears to have been written entirely without the influence of lawyers.

After a paragraph of fake legal nonsense with some random latin phrases thrown in, it begins:

We firmly believe that privacy [is] both inconsequential and unimportant to you. If it were not, you probably would not have a Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn account: and you certainly wouldn’t ever use a search engine like Google. If you’re one of those tin-foil-hat wearing crazies that actually cares about privacy: stop using our services and get a life.

We agree with Mark Zuckerberg when he pithily opined “The age of Privacy is Over.”

It goes on to explain that while most companies claim to care about your privacy, “we care about profiteering and violating it when expedient or useful.” That includes selling any of your data that it wants to any and all corporate customers, sending you limitless spam, tracking your movements via GPS if possible, watching you through your webcam, and implanting a chip in your body that is subject to reinstallation whenever the company chooses.

“You may think of using any of our programs or services as the privacy equivalent of living in a webcam fitted glass house under the unblinking eye of Big Brother: you have no privacy with us,” it summarizes. “If we can use any of your details to legally make a profit, we probably will.”

And finally, if all of this seems like it might be a joke, the policy clarifies: “We are serious about all of the above. So don’t go trying to sue us later with some nonsense like ‘I thought that was all satire.’ All your privacy are belong to us. We mean it.”

I reached out to Corley for comment and didn’t hear back from him. But self-destructive terms of service aside, Skipity seems to be a real search engine. Though it mostly acts as a front-end for Bing and Amazon’s site search, it also offers a StumbleUpon-like feature that lets you “skipity” to a random page on the web based on your interests. Those interests can be stored between visits if the user signs up for Skipity’s Facebook app, which gives the site access to the user’s profile data and that of his or her friends.

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I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry…maybe both. Satire or not, at least somebody has the b*lls to be truthfull about the fact they, by using their service…”own you, what you do, how you do it and with whom”.

It may in fact be the worst privacy statement ever. What is so horrible is that its truthfulness is blunt and bracing.

Thus, though I dislike the message, I give it solid praise for its bracing picture of the facts on the ground at this present time. I also give it solid marks as a clear statement of a future worth averting.

You mean “worst” from the standpoint that it dosen’t do a real good job of being politically correct in making the “chump” feel good about being suckered into giving away their personal life for the benefit of senior management here or abroad?

Recently I had a disturbing experience with GoDaddy. For some transactions they request that you send them a copy of an identification document. When I read the Privacy Policy they linked in the site, I noticed that it allows them to use the file or the data on it anyway they want. I sent them 2 e-mails questioning them about that and they refused to answer and just said to read the same published Privacy Policy if I had doubts.

I have this big “F” on my Firefox toolbar. A few times I have clicked on it thinking that I was logging into my Facebook account. Each time, however, I was awakened not to use it because of the extensive information access the app was requesting.

I like the honesty of the privacy policy of this company. Other companies are using information the same way but are just not saying it.

Even though I like social media outlets, I do believe that people are putting too much information on them, thinking it is their own private little world.

For example, when I signed up for my Forbes account today, I used a user name that I like. Without me doing anything other than supplying that user name, the site pulled up an image that I have used in the past.

I am okay with the image because obviously, I have given permission.

My point is: be selective about the information that you share; read the privacy policies; and be mindful about who and/or what you give access to.